Life in the Public Campus: 30 minutes before class

Apart from been a blogger who rants and complains about everything, like people haven't got problems of their own, I also happen to be a student. I happen to be the not-your-average student in a Public Kenyan university. I have decided that I would be doing several of my readers a favor by occasionally blogging about aspects of campus life.

I am going to narrate a story based on a few lies and several true stories. Its up to the reader to figure out which is which. The story was penned( in a bad handwriting characteristic of a bunch of campus students) slightly more than an year ago, in a boring campus lecture. I bumped into the story in a recent boring lecture(most are even more boring than high school classes) in an exercise book which I had recycled from a previous semester. Been an environmentalist, I discovered that I had various empty exercise books left over from previous units. If you are wondering why they are empty yet I had completed the semester, I researched, and preliminary results indicated that one out of several things may have occurred, namely:-

• The Lecturer rarely attended class
  
• The student rarely attended lectures
  
• The lecturer heavily relied on use of handouts hence rendering note-taking redundant
  
• The student was too lazy to jot down notes
• A combination of 2 or more of the above factors

Before you forget , we were talking of a story, which had been written in the back of a recycled exercise book and which I present to you below, in it's original form.

***
Class was supposed to start at 11, I arrived at 11.10 am. See, it's not my fault that i arrived late for class. At 10.59, I was still asleep, waking up at 11.00 a.m. At 11.01, I was my trousers and shirts simultaneously , between 11.02 and 11.04  looking for my shoes. I found one shoe at 11.03 and the other at 4 minutes pass 11. I then searched for my exercise book at 5 minutes past 11.  6 minutes past 11 found me in the washroom and my walk to class began at 11.07, eventually arriving in class at 10 minutes past 11.

As I walked into class late, I accidentally stepped on a chic as I tried to find a seat in the crowded room. Coincidentally  I happened to seat next to her.

At 11.12, I came to a conclusion that either I musty be in the wrong class, or the lecturer was plain boring. So I did the next best thing, and struck a conversation with the girl who I was now seated next to.  The topic was my lateness to the now boring lecture.

I told her how I had been dreaming at 10.48, still sleeping at 10.49 .....

She was  kind enough to advise me on how to make it to class early, and gave herself as an example. to make it in time for the 11 o' clock class, she underwent the following preparations:-

10.25 Starts calling a guy, then decides to hang up
10.26 SMS the guy above
10.28 Empties her bucket
10.30 Apply foundation for washing face
10.31 - 10.38 Goes to washroom to wash her face
10.38 - 10.42 Apply makeup
a0.43 - 10.45 Look for handbag no. 2
10.46 Empty handbag 1
10.47 Put belongings in  handbag 2
10.48 Look for phone
10.49 Start going to class
10.50 Return to room for umbrella
10.51 Finally go to class

Wet Cement Part 2

Like the footprint on wet cement, even before my previous note dried up, we are having issues with wet cement again, literally.

This time round, a building under construction came down, killing several people in the process. This is the second time it is happening in Kenya within 3 months. In fact, In Kenya, it is no longer news for a building under construction to collapse. It has become a statistic which we can comfortably account for.

We can even give you a mathematical function detailing the number of Kenyans who will be burried in wet cement in a collapsed building next year, all this within an error margin of less than 10.

As for the owners, they pattern is that they will "go missing" till the event is no longer enjoying high ratings in the news.

Matter of fact, we can even come up with a Kenyan TV reality show titled "collapse". I assure you that Collapse will be quite a successful reality show and that there will be enough grim footage to last you several seasons.

You can even take part by setting foot in any building under construction in Kenya. Chances are high that you will make it to the show.

Wet Cement

Last Week, the school decided to install one more tank as a solution to Nairobi's failed city status via its inability to supply enough water to the deserved recipients. The tank, quite a large 24,000 litre capacity tank, had to be supported on a concrete base, and a concrete apron had been constructed at the tap. The new tank already had water as the apron was been constructed, and the contractor decided to seal the apron area with a paper and some stones as the apron dried.

I was surprised to find some bright students using the tap despite the drying cement.The students had decided that they couldn't wait for the cement to dry well enough, and that the older tank which is a couple of metres away was supplying water at too slow a rate. The bright university students continued around with their watery business, oblivious of all the details on ground.

The contractor, not one to be put off easily, decided to patch up the area damaged by use of the tap on wet cement, and reseal the tap apron again. A few hours later, the bright students were back again and more determined to prove how bright they were by not letting the cement dry. Now we have to use a new apron with a broken floor due to the above actions of our bright students.Perhaps some of them are a group that attempted to light a fire under an LPG gas cylinder during an infamous campus strike.(luckily, some brighter students put out the fire before they could flatten a few buildings)

Well, the bright students who will not leave wet cement to dry are not in a league of their own. In and out of campus, they are joined by a league of other former and current campus, high-school and other idiots who have no time and understanding of how cement functions.

You will find their foot prints embossed in pavements , their cars stuck in road constructions site they did not see amongst other places. Such people also exhibit a behaviour that leads to them taking the shortest line between their source and destination of travel. They cross barbed wires, tape , grass and drive by the side of the road to get to their destinations faster than the rest of us.

We seem to be in such a hurry that we can not wait for the cement to dry, but at the same time, we seem to be in no hurry to pour more cement.Government and company projects take a significant fraction of our lives to start, despite our love for wet cement.(Anything longer than a few months out of a 50 year life is a significant fraction)

So what is your contribution to the marks on the wet cement? Is it your inscribed name, your foot print, damage, admiration, the cement, the time or the plans?

Corruption in Kenya; A brief on causes and how to manage.

So Ringera is finally home, and as a resulty many Kenyans are now happy. The few that were nabbed under his tenure like former Tourism permanent secretary Rebecca Nabutola, are still doing their rounds in court, and will still have to answer to their corruption cases.So will many other non-high profile individuals that the Kenya Anti Corruption Authority nabbed in the same tenure.

Despite this effort by Ringera and his team to fight corruption, many Kenyans are convinced that Ringera would have done a better job. In fact, many were calling for Ringera's dismissal based on his perceived dismal performance.In short, they were convinced that Ringera was not doing a nice job.

What they did not take into account was that Ringera was doing quite a nice job, accroding to his employer. Given that the big corrupt cats that Kenyans want arrested are Ringera's employers, how did they expect him to go after them.

The chances of the KACC going after such people are equivalent to KACC arresting you for tipping someone to do you a small favour, like finding a file at your District Headquarters. Corruption in Kenya is quite entrenched, and so is impunity. This can be blamed on the patronage system, where Kenyans rely on their friends, relatives and friends of relatives to get jobs and preferential treatment. In some cases, you have to know someone for them to do what they are employed and paid by the government to do. With such a patronage system, we view our patrons as God fathers, whom we cannot punish for their mistakes, and who are in fact doing us a favour and not a dis-service.

This is made worse by the high competition of resources in Kenya. Access to resources in the country such as jobs is limited. Therefore, when it comes to acquiring such resources, Kenyans employ unethical means to get an upper hand. Such unethical means include bribing, sexual favours, exchange for other preferential treatment amongst others.

We also happen to be a jealous lot, and especially jealous of those who are filthy rich while we toil and sweat to break to their ranks. We will therefore look for ways to bring down the filthy rich to our socio-economic level when we find it increasingly and impossibly hard to get to their level. Such measures will include finding out how the got their wealth and persecuting them for methods they employed to get to their wealth . We will label them 'corrupt' when they receive small favours. Of course , the same way that 20 litres in a tank is a small amount of water, so is lake Victoria to the Pacific ocean. Similarly, that small gift of 200 shillings to you will be equivalent to a gift of 2 million shillings to a filthy rich person.

They are no more corrupt than most of us are.

We should therefore look for a better way to tackle corruption in Kenya. Best amongst this is legalization of corruption. We should recognize corruption as a major and important part of our society which we can not do without. We should establish a legal corruption fund footed by the taxpayer. The corruption fund should be run by a secretariat that should consist of officials appointed on a tribal basis, and appointed by the president (and prime minister) at their own discretion.

All projects carried out by the government(both local and central) should then have an opportunity of drawing “miscellaneous funds” from this corruption fund. The corruption fund should not account for its expenditure. It should be located a sizable amount of funds in our annual budget. We should then establish strict accounting procedures for government projects, such that their usage of funds meant for the actual project is above board, with the exception of the “miscellaneous” funds derived from the corruption funds. Of course we should give this corruption fund a sweet sounding name like, "miscellaneous project fund" that attempts to cover the nakedness of the fund. Like a miniskirt, it should serve to cover enough to stop us blowing the whistles.

This way, we will be able to account for corruption, budget for it and have government projects been completed and working to our satisfaction. Who said that we cannot have our a cake and it eat. We will leave the corrupt officials in charge of the projects to fight for their share from this fund, anonymously of course.

That, gentlemen and ladies, is how we can honestly tackle corruption without hidden agendas.